Preliminary Syllabus

Instructor Name: Peter Kline Course Name: POET 124W – The Poet’s Craft

Required Reading The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, 3rd Edition, Volumes 1 and 2 Rhyme’s Reason, John Hollander

Grade Options:

Students have three grading options for Continuing Studies courses:

Letter Grade (A, B, C, D, No Pass) - written work is required

Credit/No Credit (CR/NC) - attendance and participation (as determined by the instructor) is required

No Grade Requested (NGR) - no work is required; No credit shall be received; No proof of attendance can be provided. (Not suitable for those requiring proof of attendance/completion.)

Grading Most students enroll in this course under the non-graded or the Credit/No Credit (i.e. pass/fail) options. If you would prefer to be graded, or if you must receive a letter grade to meet the requirements of your academic program, participation will serve as the basis of your grade. In order to receive an A, you must complete seven of the ten weekly assignments on time, fulfill your responsibilities as a lead critic, and participate thoughtfully in class discussion. If you complete less than 60% of the course work on time, you will receive an F.

How This All Works Each week will begin with an introductory craft talk that you’ll find in the Schedule section. To enrich and expand this discussion, I will ask you to read selections from the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. I will also assign reading from John Hollander’s Rhyme’s Reason. You’ll find these listed under This Week’s Reading. Under Topics for Discussion I will pose questions based on the reading to help you think about how the craft techniques are actually being used in published poetry and how you can use them in your own writing. Under Writing Assignments, you’ll find a different writing prompt each week designed to allow you to focus on an aspect of poetry writing. Our group conversation begins when you post your musings and discoveries in the Discussion Forum. The Forum is a bulletin board where all the action happens. Here, we’ll have ongoing conversations about your work, the books we read together, and different craft topics. This is where you’ll post your work, and where our workshop will take place.

Weekly Schedule Each Monday, I will post a new lecture, discussion questions, and writing prompt. Your poems will be due on Thursdays at noon, Pacific Time. To allow each of you to work at your own pace, I will post each week’s material one week in advance. The class will continue to discuss each round of poems and discussion questions until the next round of poems is due (on the following Thursday). I won't be in the classroom over the weekend, but you're welcome to start posting for the next week whenever you're ready. The classroom is always open!

Weekly Reading Reflections Reading is a fundamental part of a writer’s training. Writers love to read, and they engage in the act of reading just as anyone with an appreciation for the written word does. At the same time, writers read as writers, paying close attention to the architecture of the text. Writers read to understand the choices that another writer has made to produce certain effects. We might ask: Why does this poem make me feel so sad? What makes this unsympathetic speaker likeable? How is time handled in this poem? How does the poet takes us from the beginning of the poem to the end?

This course asks you to practice reading as a writer, since this will ultimately strengthen your own writing. You will be encouraged to bring together your emotional side (How does this make me feel?) with your analytical side (What formal choices has the writer made that could explain the way I’m feeling?). Each week, I’ll post questions for you to reflect on. I highly encourage you to jump in to these discussions. As you know, discussions are always more interesting when more people participate and there’s a wide range of opinions.

Required reading for this course is fairly light (about 10-12 poems per week, with supplemental reading on craft) – this is purposeful to allow you more time to work on your writing. If you are ever interested in doing more reading, please just ask, and I will point you in the right direction. Also, one of the best things about a big anthology like The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry is that it can be such fun to flip through it and see what you discover. There are hundreds of great poems in there that we simply can’t get to.

Weekly Writing Exercises Aside from voracious reading, the only way to improve as a writer is to write, write, write! To that end, I’ll ask you to write one poem each week. I will provide you with weekly prompts, each drawn from the ideas covered in the week’s written lecture. I encourage you to use these prompts, as they will lead you to practice and develop some of the essential techniques of poetry writing. However, if you have your own idea or inspiration for a poem, you are always free to ignore the prompt and write whatever you like.

I know that it may not be convenient or possible for you to turn in a poem every week. Therefore, you are allowed (though not required, of course!) to “take a pass” three weeks out of the ten. Therefore, during this ten-week course, you will write seven poems. Each week that you write a poem, you will post it in the Forum so that it can be discussed by your classmates. If for any reason you would prefer not to share a poem with the class, you can always feel free to send it directly to me instead.

Workshops Each week, two of your classmates will serve as lead critics of your poem, and you will also be responsible for leading criticism on two of your classmates’ work. At the start of the course, I will distribute a week-by-week schedule listing who will serve as lead critic for whom.

As a lead critic, your job is to get the discussion started on each of your two classmates’ poems. This doesn’t mean that you need to bring up every possible issue related to the poems. Rather, your task is to ask specific questions that will encourage other people to share their thoughts. Remember that whether you are giving criticism or praise, it is extremely important to be as specific as possible, citing particular lines, images, metaphors, etc. whenever applicable.

When acting as a lead critic, try to open discussion of your classmates’ work promptly (within 24 hours or so), which will allow the poems to receive a full week of discussion.

Your Involvement The fabulous thing about the Online Writers’ Studio is that it brings together like- minded people from all over the world. You’ll get to know doctors and school teachers, commodities traders and Jungian analysts, all of whom share a passion for the written word.

This is your class. I’m the guide, yes, but the quality of our discussions will depend upon your engagement, insightfulness, and good humor. This course will be as good as you give.

So, please participate fully and generously in discussions. Read your classmates’ work with a keen eye and a sense of possibility. And please, let me know if there’s anything I can do to make this a better experience for you. If there’s something you want to discuss, let me know. This is your class.

A Final Important Note Although many students take online courses with the absolute best intentions of doing every last assignment, "real life"—family, illness, professional deadlines— often has a way of making that impossible. Sometimes, the frustration this causes prompts students to drop completely out of the class. Rather than adopting an "all-or-nothing" approach to your participation in this course, I recommend simply doing what you can, when you can. If there are a few weeks where you don't get to the reading, fine. If you have to skip a couple exercises, this is also okay. As long as you're continuing to work steadily on your poems and commenting on your classmates' submissions, you'll be fine. And remember – if you DO have to take a couple of weeks completely away from the class, you can always come back!

Week One: Image and Abstraction

Reading - Norton Vol. 1: Robert Frost, “After Apple-Picking” p. 207; H. D., “Oread” p. 395, “Sea Violet” p. 397. Norton Vol. 2: Elizabeth Bishop, “The Fish” p. 21; Frank Stafford, “Traveling through the Dark” p. 83; Frank O’Hara, “The Day Lady Died” p. 365; Robert Bly, “The Great Society” p. 372; Galway Kinnell, “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” p. 382; James Wright, “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” p. 417; Philip Levine, “They Feed They Lion” p. 423

Week Two: Figurative Language

Reading - Norton Vol. 1: Wallace Stevens, “The Snow Man” p. 247; Jean Toomer, “Her Lips Are Copper Wire,” “Portrait in Georgia” p. 560. Norton Vol. 2: Philip Larkin, “Sad Steps” p. 221; Sylvia Plath, “The Colossus,” “Morning Song,” “Blackberrying,” “Cut” p. 597-609; Seamus Heaney, “Digging” p. 723; Yusef Komunyakaa, “Facing It” p. 861

Week Three: Meter and Scansion

Reading - Norton Vol. 1: Thomas Hardy, “Your Last Drive,” “The Voice” p. 55-57; A. E. Houseman, “To an Athlete Dying Young” p. 85; W. B. Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” p. 94; Robert Frost, “Dust of Snow,” “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Acquainted with the Night” p. 214-217; Marianne Moore, “The Fish” p. 436, “The Paper Nautilus” p. 451; Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz” p. 843. Norton Vol. 2: Philip Larkin, “This Be the Verse” p. 223

Rhyme’s Reason: p. 1-11

Week Four: Blank Verse and Enjambment; Metrical Variations

Reading - Norton Vol. 1: Robert Frost, “Mending Wall,” “Home Burial,” “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” “Birches,” “Directive” p. 204-225; Wallace Stevens, “The Idea of Order at Key West” p. 249; Wilfred Owen, “Strange Meeting” p. 528. Norton Vol. 2: Howard Nemerov, “The Icehouse in Summer” p. 180; Philip Larkin, “Church Going” p. 212, “The Whitsun Weddings” p. 215; Donald Justice, “On the Death of Friends in Childhood” p. 275

Rhyme’s Reason: p. 11-13

Week Five: Sonnet and Rhyme

Reading - Norton Vol. 1: E.A. Robinson, “Reuben Bright” p. 164; Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Gazing Upon Him Now, Severe and Dead” p. 512, “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed” p. 512, “Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat nor Drink” p. 512; Wilfred Owen, “Anthem for Doomed Youth” p. 525; Jean Toomer, “November Cotton Flower” p. 559; Patrick Kavanagh, “Inniskeen Road: July Evening” p. 746; W.H. Auden, “Who’s Who” p. 789, from “In Time of War” p. 795. Norton Vol. 2: Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Rites for Cousin Vit” p. 144; James Wright, “Saint Judas” p. 416; Seamus Heaney, “Requiem for the Croppies” p. 725

Rhyme’s Reason: 13-21

Week Six: Linked Forms

Reading - Norton Vol. 1: Theodore Roethke, “The Waking” p. 849; Norton Vol. 2: “Sestina” p. 30, “One Art” p. 43; Dylan Thomas “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” p. 110. Anthony Hecht, “The Book of Yolek” p. 233; Donald Justice, “In Memory of the Unknown Poet…” p. 279; John Ashbery, “Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape” p. 393; Rita Dove, “Parsley” p. 979

Rhyme’s Reason: “Repetitive Structures” p. 37-46

Week Seven: Free Verse Forms: Biblical Free Verse and Free Blank Verse

Reading - Norton Vol. 1: Walt Whitman, “Cavalry Crossing a Ford” p. 23; T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” p. 463. Norton Vol. 2: Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” (part I) p. 337, From “Kaddish” p. 349; Les Murray, From “The Buladelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle” p. 714; James Merrill, “Days of 1964,” “The Victor Dog” p. 309-311; Seamus Heaney, “Death of a Naturalist” p. 724, “The Stone Verdict” p. 744; Eavan Boland, “The Pomegranate” p. 851

Rhyme’s Reason: “Free Verse” p. 26-30; “Rhetorical Schemes” p. 48-50

Week Eight: Free Verse Forms: Imagist Free Verse

Reading - Norton Vol. 1: William Carlos Williams, “Danse Russe,” “Sympathetic Portrait of a Child,” “The Last Words of My English Grandmother,” “The Dance” p. 288-300; Ezra Pound, “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” p. 352; Stanley Kunitz, “The Portrait,” “The Catch” p. 760-763; Theodore Roethke, “Elegy for Jane” p. 849. Norton Vol. 2: “Waking in the Blue” p. 129, “ Skunk Hour” p. 132; Robert Creeley, “I Know a Man” p. 330, “Mother’s Voice” p. 333; Gary Snyder, “Above Pate Valley” p. 537; Mary Oliver, “August,” “Hawk” p. 653-654

Norton Vol. 1: Ezra Pound, “How to Read” p. 939-941

Week Nine: Revision

Reading - Norton Vol. 1: Emily Dickinson, #249, #258, #632, #754; e e cummings, “Buffalo Bill’s,” “the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls,” “may i feel said he,” “anyone lived in a pretty how town” p. 547-553; W.H. Auden, “Museé des Beaux Arts” p. 797. Norton Vol. 2: Richard Wilbur, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” p. 198; Philip Larkin, “Talking in Bed,” “High Windows” p. 218-221; Ted Hughes, “The Thought Fox” p. 561; Rita Dove, “Adolescence–II” p. 976

Norton Vol. 1: T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” p. 941-947

Week Ten: Getting Published

Reading - Norton Vol. 1: W. B. Yeats, “The Fascination of What’s Difficult,” “A Coat,” “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” p. 101-102, 142; Robinson Jeffers, “Rock and Hawk” p. 417; Marianne Moore, “Poetry” p. 438; W. H. Auden, “Musee des Beaux Arts,” “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” “In Praise of Limestone” p. 797-806. Norton Vol. 2: Elizabeth Bishop, “Poem” p. 40; Frank O’Hara, “Why I Am Not a Painter” p. 369; Mark Strand, “Eating Poetry” p. 621